Guest Blogs

7th Feb Twitterpated!!!

As part of constructing my new website, the builders set up a twitter account last week for me so that I could get a “following” prior to launching the new site. I had no clue about using twitter. I don’t have a cell phone, so I have had no reason to even consider checking it out before. I thought it was just a site where people tell their “friends” what they are doing, etc. So I was still a complete twitter virgin when I first logged on by myself on Saturday morning (3 days ago now).

I was delighted when I found that I already had a follower! He had responded to the “this is my first tweet” message sent for me by the one who set up my account. Then when I clicked on the “follow” button and the cavalcade started, I soon realized, ALL HELL DONE BROKE LOOSE NOW!!! All weekend I tried to keep up with it, but it just overwhelmed me. Who can read all this stuff? Millions of tweets at a time…..tweeting and retweeting, whew. By yesterday, Monday, I had 80 followers!!! ? Most are authors or are related in some way to the publishing business, since that is how I selected the ones for me to “follow”. Surprisingly, I did not see any photos of someone’s dinner, or learn that they were sitting in the shade on a porch someplace, as I had expected to see while I was yet a virgin.

I guess I would have to say that I have officially lost my twitter virginity now, although I am still a rank amateur. But the worst thing is that I may have become Twitterpated. All weekend I checked it often, and reveled as the numbers of followers gradually climbed. Up, up, up the count went, steadily and relentlessly. Some said they didn’t want to get “DM’s”. What the heck was that, porn or profanity or something?

Then I actually got a private message from someone telling me that they welcomed “DM”s. Hummm…not likely porn then. So I took a chance and sent a message to them asking for clarification on “DM”s. They replied with just the words “direct message”. I knew that it was a direct message, and couldn’t understand why they had just announced that fact without giving any content. It took this dumb dodo some time and pondering to figure out that “direct message” WAS the message! DM, of course. You would think that a person with a master’s degree should have figured that out quickly, right? But being newly Twitterpated is a circumstance that was never covered in grad school, at least not in 1974.

I checked my twitter just now to see how many tweets there have been since I started this article, and found one new follower bringing the total to almost 100, and over 400 new unread tweets. Whew. And retweets, and re-retweets galore, even some of mine. As I get plunged deeper and deeper into the vast twitter ocean I am trying to put all of this into perspective by thinking back on my past experiences regarding electronic communications. Since I have many decades to cover, however, I think I will just leave that excursion into yesteryear for tomorrow’s blog.